“Tonight, then,” Canidy said. “Tomorrow we’re going to have a clambake on the beach. I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with that.”
“Let’s go, then,” Baker said.
“You realize we’ll have to make the trip twice? Once to get it, and once to put it back?”
“Unless you elect to sleep with it handcuffed to your wrist,” Baker said.
When they returned from Lakehurst, Canidy politely asked Admiral de Verbey if he might use his war room.
He then collected Fine, who had been sitting on the porch with Mrs. Whittaker, and led him up to it.
“In the somewhat changed circumstances,” Baker said, “I think the best thing to do is run briefly through the whole mission. If either of you have questions, interrupt me. It may not be necessary to remind both of you, but I will: The classification of this operation is Top Secret Cabinet Level. And the cabinet’s access is on a need-to-know basis. For your general information, the President has decided that the Vice President does not have the need to know.”
“We’re impressed, Eldon,” Canidy said. “Can we move on now?”
Baker opened the briefcase, made note of the lock-open sequence count, and took out a large-scale map. He spread the map out on the table so that it was right side up in front of Canidy.
“If you will look, you can see, halfway down the leg of Africa near the Portuguese Angola, Rhodesia, and Belgian Congo borders, a town called Kolwezi,” Baker said. “It’s in the Mitumba mountain chain in Katanga Province.”
Canidy found it and pointed. Lindbergh’s guess had been off by no more than two or three hundred miles.
Baker next handed him a sheaf of photographs: brand-new ten-inch-square aerial photographs, some eight-by-ten-inch prints, which were also new, and some other photographs that appeared to have been blown up from old snapshots.
These showed a small town of frame buildings with several huge excavations around it. The excavations were so huge that roads leading to the bottoms of the pits had been carved into its sides. There were also smelters and mountains of smelter and mine tailings. There was an airfield, which looked unpaved except perhaps with mine or smelter tailings, which were often used for that purpose. The “tower” was about ten feet off the ground, and none of the airplanes on the parking ramp was multiengined.
“What we have to do, in absolute secrecy,” Baker said as Canidy worked his way through the pictures, “is remove from Kolwezi ten thousand pounds of a very special cargo and bring it here.”
“What kind of cargo?” Canidy asked.
“An ore,” Baker said. “Please do not ask any further questions about the ore. All you have to know is that it is a dry, nonexplosive substance. Some of it has the characteristics of ordinary dirt, and some of it is what they call spillings, which means with rocks in it. The rest of it is in the form of smelter residue. It will all be packed in canvas bags, each weighing approximately ninety pounds.”
Canidy nodded. “That’s a lot of weight,” he said. “But it’s within the weight/range limitations of several of the flight plans Colonel Lindbergh laid out.”
“What did you say, Dick?” Stanley Fine asked, shocked.
“I don’t think you should talk about that,” Baker said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Canidy flared. “Stan, the transport expert who laid most of this on was Colonel Charles Lindbergh. But don’t say anything. The President thinks he’s a Nazi sympathizer.”
Fine shook his head in disbelief.
“The departure point will be Newark Airport,” Baker resumed. “You will fly the bomber stream to Ireland, via Gander Field, Newfoundland, and from Ireland to Portugal and then down the west coast of Africa, stopping here, and here, and here. To Kolwezi. There will be a crew of three. We have recruited a pilot and copilot from the Air Transport Command. They were both formerly Pan American pilots who have flown to South Africa before. Not, it is germane to note, in land aircraft. They flew Sikorsky seaplanes.
“But they have received transition training, so they are C- 46 qualified, and they will transition both of you into the C- 46, so that if it becomes necessary you can fly the aircraft. Coming out of Kolwezi, there will be a passenger.”
“Who?” Canidy asked.
“Grunier,” Baker said.
“Grunier?” Canidy asked. “Oh, Christ! Again?”
“We hope to have his family in England within two weeks,” Baker said, again ignoring him. “That was his price for his cooperation in this, and we met it.”